Family
by Alina-Cantha
Summary: When all you've got is friends, that can become a bit of a family in itself the Hah Brothers, and what they're about.


_Eyeshield 21 fan-fiction. Really. I'm addicted. Strangely, the first one I'm posting is of the Ha Ha Kyoudai. I have no idea why, but I absolutely adore them. So funny, so strangely cute, so alluring. Weird. Annnyyyyhoo... I don't know if any of this has been covered in the manga and/or anime - I'm only up through Volume 7 and Episode 25. But yeah. The trippy writing style returns again! I have absolutely no regard for the word processor's "grammar check". It just makes fun of me anyways..._

**Family**

_**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Eyeshield 21. I just write about it for fun. :3** _

Although they all argue against it, it's true. It simply makes a strange kind of sense to call them brothers, because that is what they are. A family is a strange creature, a bunch of people thrown together, seemingly at random, with no true guarantees that they will like each other. And with their own families destroyed, trash, or non-existent, it just made sense to find others, and make a family of your own.

At least then you could choose who you wanted.

With these three, it made even more sense. They liked smoking, they liked drinking, and they liked violence. Some common interests – it was a good start. And it simply grew from there.  
Juumonji, like it or not, was their leader, the "eldest" of a theoretical family. He called the shots, he took the lead, he calmed fiery tempers, and he watched out for them. A bunch of punks, needing protection? No, it was just the way an elder brother acts – you get in your shit, you're in it. But at least they'll be there to help pull you out of it.

It was all in their yearbook, back from junior high. Families sucked, classes sucked, and Togano read manga (like always). And they had no dreams, except tongue-in-cheek dreams that they knew would never come true. (To rule the world, Kuroki? Come on!) They knew exactly what would happen to them – they'd smoke, drink and fight their way through high school, if they even survived that far without getting a knife in the stomach or something, and then they'd go from there. Their long-term vision consisted of the next morning, and trying not to listen to the screaming outside bedrooms, and just leaving when it got to be too much.

That was how Juumonji had met Kuroki at first, after all. A late-night walk, a cigarette run – a newly-lit one dangling from his lips, Juumonji had looked up to see a silhouette against the dark blue sky. A boy, sitting on the roof, looking at the stars and idly tapping a metal bat alternately against the toe of his shoe and the roof. Thump, clank. Thump, clank. Thump, clank.

"Want a cig?" Juumonji had asked, shrugging his shoulders in the orange glow of the streetlight. It was a strange attempt at compassion. Normal people didn't sit on the roof of a building with a baseball bat, after all – not even punks like them.

"Leave me the hell alone," the kid had answered, his bat shifting to a ready position, cocked on one shoulder, ready to strike, although the guy didn't even stand up.

"Here." Jumonji lit an extra cigarette and tossed it up onto the roof, having to give it a second try after the wind caught it the first time, putting it out and blowing it away a bit. The second time, it landed pretty close to the kid, who simply slammed his foot down on the unlit portion of it, staring at it as the smoke rose up from the tip.

And then he picked it up, and tucked the crumpled, dirty smoke into the corner of his mouth. "Thanks." The only thing Juumonji ever saw of the other guy was the faint glow around his face as the ember-red tip of the cigarette glowed.

"No problem. See you later."

The next day, another kid at school slouched up to him. "I owe you one," he slurred, flicking a cigarette at Juumonji, who had flailed in the air for it, trying to hide it before anybody else noticed. He had still cared about things like that then, way back in junior high.

"Like I said. No problem."

And then there were two.

They never even really noticed Togano until he just…was there. Day after day, they slacked their way through classes, sneaking smokes and drinks when they could. Until Kuroki had tossed a half-empty pack of cigarettes at the guy who just was always with them. Togano slid one from the pack, lit up, and went back to his manga.

It was always a bit of a mystery how he had managed to infiltrate their group so effectively, but the guy wasn't any trouble, and why the hell should they care anyways? If they wanted to, they'd just kick his ass out. Like it was some exclusive club or something.

And that was their family. You took on one, you took them all on. You could never find them apart, and their little shtick… Even the three themselves had never realized that they did it until that game against the Taiyou Sphinx. And then it only increased their solidarity.

Brothers are brothers, and you never leave one another. Never abandon them. You stand and fight, damn it. Like a man. Testosterone-fueled drive, yes, but an inexplicable force that, in the end, it seemed only Juumonji understood.

They had goals now. They wanted to win. They weren't junk, damn it! Never junk. They wanted to be (and now could be!) something more than those damn kids who always smoked out behind the school, and were going to die before they were twenty-one, victims of their own stupidity.

A way to rise above their piece-of-shit families, their bad grades, their apathy. Something to work for, something to care about. To think that originally, they were blackmailed into it. And if nothing else, they had another person to look to.

There's love there, although you wouldn't know it to look at it. A cussing, swearing, violent love, but it's there. Because brothers are like that.


End file.
